2020: Close, But No Cigar

I realise I’m a bit late to be casting a beady eye all the way back to 2020, but given the retro-centric nature of everythingsgonegreen, any blogpost covering work from this century might very well be considered an unexpected bonus. Being timely, current, and relevant has never really been this blog’s thing. If you’re here, you probably already know that.

I’ve already looked at my ten “most played” or favourite new album purchases of 2020 (here), but I also want to share a few thoughts on those that made the “close, but no cigar” list … albums I picked up, enjoyed, but for whatever reason didn’t quite make the final “albums of 2020” list.

I’ll start with a couple of homegrown efforts that could easily have made the cut for that list alongside the four local albums that did. Two albums that sat well beyond the mainstream Kiwi pop saturation point that gave us commercial behemoths like Six60, Benee, and L.A.B. as key local industry flagbearers in 2020. As so often, the best local stuff tended to fly well beneath the radar of fans of the aforementioned. Which is a shame … and probably not really a shame at all.

Darren Watson’s Getting Sober For the End of the World came very close to making the cut, but it just came down to the fact that I drew the line at a strict ten. I completely get why a few of the more learned local scribes were quite happy to label the album as his best ever, and it was yet another top-notch effort from the country’s foremost exponent of the blues and roots music.

Tauranga-Auckland pop-rock outfit The Leers returned in 2020 with an (album-length) EP called The Only Way Out Is In, which was recorded in Los Angeles in late 2019, before being given legs ahead of this year’s summer festival circuit. It revealed a softer, more chart-friendly (and crucially, festival-ready) sound, and I was pretty hooked on it for a few weeks late on in the year.

 Elsewhere, Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways got a lot of love, and the old fella keeps coming up with new ways to remain relevant. I’ve always been a little bit hot and cold on Dylan; I absolutely love a handful of Dylan albums, but given that he’s released dozens upon dozens of albums across a 60-year timeframe, loving a “handful” probably doesn’t equate to fully paid-up fandom. Rough and Rowdy Ways was chock full of Dylan signature moments, but mostly it appealed for the way its seemingly effortless stream-of-consciousness narrative kept finding raw nerves to twist and tweak.

Only slightly younger than Bob, the ever reliable and always relatable Paul Weller came up with yet another top set in the form of On Sunset. Weller is a living legend, there’s no two ways about it, and On Sunset contained little slices of all of the many styles that Weller has thrown at us across the past four decades (and more). Rock, soul, pastoral folk, plus rhythm and blues. A genuine hybrid. Weller shows no sign of slowing down whatsoever.

I’m a big alt-80s nut. That goes without saying. Yet I somehow managed to miss everything that Dutch darkwave/goth merchants Clan of Xymox released during what might be called their peak years. I put that right last year when I picked up a copy of the 2020 album Spider On The Wall, which turned out to be a revelation, and the album got a lot of my ear-time during the year. I’ll have a dig back through the band’s extensive back catalogue to see what else I’ve missed.

Kruder and Dorfmeister’s 1995 was one of my rare CD purchases during the year. Brand new, yet somewhat ancient in that it was a collection of tunes that only ever previously saw the light of day on an (unreleased/pre-release) white label some 25 years ago. Discarded and only recently rediscovered by a duo not exactly renowned for being especially prolific since their mid-to-late 90s heyday. Whilst it doesn’t in any way scale the heights of K&D’s best stuff like Sessions (1998) - not much does, after all - I reckon there’s enough on 1995 to satisfy fans, with snippets of that trademark plush/warm production aesthetic they’ll all be very familiar with. It just seemed so appropriate that I got this one on CD, via mail order.

 When I compiled the blog’s albums of 2019 list, I bemoaned the fact that Angel Olsen’s All Mirrors was a relatively late arrival on my radar and I perhaps hadn’t given it enough attention. Oddly enough, I got that chance in 2020 when a heavily reconfigured version was released under the guise of Whole New Mess. Effectively a stripped-back variation on tracks originally found on All Mirrors, I downloaded a copy of Whole New Mess and it once again sat there in my “must listen to” folder for far too long before I got to it. But I heard enough to know it was exceptional, and I’ll be returning to Olsen again soon. I think.

As ever, Polish dub artist Radikal Guru released his latest album, Beyond The Borders, near the end of the year. He’s got form for this sort of thing - by my reckoning this is the fourth time he’s released stuff right on the cusp of the calendar change. That hasn’t stopped three of those albums featuring on my year-end “best of” lists in the past. Not this time though. I picked up Beyond The Borders far too late to give it sufficient digestion time so it missed the cut. I may (or may not) give it a full review in the coming weeks. I’m a big fan of his stuff and I’ve listened to Beyond The Borders a fair bit already in 2021.

The Heaven and Earth Association album 4849:1 was perhaps the most pleasant surprise of 2020. In a year full of too many unpleasant surprises. I wrote a little bit about it here.

There were only a handful more album purchases, none of them especially memorable, and all reviewed on the blog; Moby’s All Visible Objects, Tame Impala’s The Slow Rush, and Pet Shop Boys’ Hotspot.

But wait … we’re not out of the 2020 woods quite just yet. I’ve got a bunch of compilations and reissues, plus a bumper set of EPs, that I haven’t ticked off yet.

Classic Album Review: Paul Weller - Wild Wood (1993)

Paul Weller has been many things to many people over the years; angry young mod and ace social commentator with The Jam, purveyor of retro-chic and fine soul music with the Style Council, and during a solo career that has easily outlasted each of those earlier incarnations, he’s since gone on to become one of pop’s most influential and much loved elder statesmen … as the Godfather of Britpop (aka the ‘”Modfather”) and the undisputed king of “dad rock”.

Personally, I’m not too fond of the latter label, but it’s one I’ve heard too many times to simply ignore; Weller’s Jam and Style Council audiences – a large proportion of them being teenage boys at the time (late Seventies, early Eighties) – grew up, had families of their own, and given the sheer quality of his ongoing work it is only natural that a fair few of them continued (and continue) to avidly follow Weller’s career.

Wild Wood was Weller’s second full-length solo release, and it rates as something of a marked improvement on his eponymous debut album of a year earlier, which lacked the vibrancy and consistency many of his fans had become accustomed to. Wild Wood was widely hailed as a major return to form at the time, and it’s an assertion that still holds true some 20 years after its release.



The thing I most like about Wild Wood – and I’ll put my cards on the table here and say it’s one of my top 25 albums of all-time – is how natural the whole thing feels. Although Stanley Road is often touted as Weller’s key solo work, there is the sense on this album that we’re getting the true Paul Weller, a return to his roots, with a number of brilliant and relatively timeless songs. Nothing flash, just plenty of introspective and searching lyrics, with a certain vulnerability exposed, and there’s a genuine acoustic and pastoral feel about the whole project.

If The Jam paid tribute to Small Faces, The Who, The Kinks and the like, and The Style Council presented a glossed up version of Motown and Sixties soul, then Wild Wood ventures back to the same era to give us a small taste of the original summer of love. Whisper it, but this just might be Paul Weller’s “hippy” album. It’s certainly the closest he’s ever come to being a paisley-tinged folkie.

Well, he was never a true punk anyway, that much was always apparent, so don’t buy those accusations of selling out. The late Sixties, in one way or another, informs just about everything Weller has done over the years, yet so frequently he’s all too readily associated with that whole late Seventies anti-establishment/punk thing. Weller is a wordsmith and musician first and foremost. The beauty of going solo meant he no longer had to conform to other people’s stereotypes. There were no wars or crusades to be fought, he could simply do what felt most comfortable – and I think that’s what we get on Wild Wood.

Highlights: first off, there’s no filler on Wild Wood, even the brief instrumental interludes fit snugly, but if I had to single out five tracks for the download generation: the opener ‘Can You Heal Us (Holy Man)’, the lead-off single ‘Sunflower’, the title-track itself – ‘Wild Wood’ (one of his best songs ever, no question), ‘Has My Fire Really Gone Out’, and a toss up between either ‘The Weaver’ or ‘Shadow Of The Sun’. But even at that, all of the above should be heard in the context for which they were intended – not as separate parts of a greater whole, but as contributing segments of a pretty special album by one of pop’s finest exponents … if not actually the best British songwriter of his generation (closely followed by Morrissey, Joe Strummer, and Elvis Costello).

Here's the title track:

 

Albums of 2012 … Afterthoughts …

I’ve had a few thoughts on some of the other albums I listened to through 2012, some of which I’ve reviewed here, and some others that didn’t stick around long enough to earn a review.

The albums that didn’t make it into the final ten fell into two categories: firstly, those albums downloaded and binned after a few listens, and secondly, those albums downloaded/purchased that I actually liked, kept, but didn’t like enough to include in the ten.

It’s the first category that provides a surprise or two. Looking back, I was pretty quick off the mark to download and bin a couple of acclaimed new release albums that would ultimately prove prominent on year-end lists elsewhere. Albums I had downloaded on the strength of positive reviews, but nonetheless albums I just couldn’t gel with.

For example, the Frank Ocean album wasn’t in my ten, ubiquitous though it was on any number of other blog year-end lists. Nor the none-too-bad Hot Chip release. Neither did indie darlings Grizzly Bear feature. New albums by all of the above were downloaded, listened to (more than once), and discarded.

 

Ocean: an orange shade of purple

Much loved though they all were elsewhere, those albums got the recycle bin treatment because I knew I wouldn’t be listening to them on any regular basis going forward. But not before I’d extracted the few tracks on each that I’d connected with (for playlist purposes).

A friend of mine – even as a fan of the Frank Ocean album – summed it up best for me when he said (paraphrasing here): “it’s almost as though critics were shocked to discover a half decent R&B album in 2012 and (over) reacted accordingly” … but for me Channel Orange remained over-hyped, and Ocean came across as something of a poor man’s Prince.

I also (downloaded and) binned new work from past favourites like The Cult, Dandy Warhols, and Smashing Pumpkins. All were mediocre – at best – when measured against deeds of yesteryear. And Muse, past masters when it comes to these year-end lists, well, what they gave us – odd album cut excepted – was the ridiculous posing as the sublime. It too was binned.

So what made it into the second category, albums that made it all the way to the end of the year, only to miss out? Albums I liked, kept, and will listen to again. The better than decent also-rans:

Coming closest of all but just missing the final ten was Leftfield’s Tourism (reviewed here), and it probably rates as my live album of the year. I gave this a thorough workout through the early part of 2012.

Orbital’s Wonky, something of a comeback album that, for the most part, lived up to the best of that pioneering outfit’s past work, also came very close to making the cut.

 

The Raveonettes: great Danes

The Raveonettes featured in last year’s ten, and 2012’s Observator was a similarly strong release that suffered only from feeling a little too familiar, mainly on account of sounding a lot too much like 2011’s Raven In The Grave. All the same, it still rates as another great album from the prolific Danish duo.

And Paul Weller’s Sonik Kicks didn’t quite win me over enough either, despite it being another solid release from a man who shows no sign of slowing down.

The Haunted Man, the latest from Bat For Lashes is also a very listenable body of work, and the feeling persists that I need to give this one a few more spins. I really came quite late to this one and perhaps haven’t absorbed it fully. On any other day The Haunted Man would more than likely have made the ten …

Had the second half of Bobby Womack’s The Bravest Man In The Universe been anywhere near as strong as the first half it too would have been a certainty for the ten, but as noted in my original review (here) it just sort of limps to an unfulfilling conclusion.

 

Bobby Womack: soul man

The Dub Pistols’ Worshipping The Dollar (reviewed here) is another that came close and it found itself on semi-permanent pod rotation for a month or two mid-year.

Upon further reflection, I was very tough on The xx’s Coexist, which has appealed to me a lot more since I wrote my original review (here), but I’m quite sure the band will console itself with the reality that far more highly regarded critics (than myself) deemed it a worthy effort, and it doubtlessly features on the majority of those year-end album lists found elsewhere.

Ditto, Cat Power’s Sun, another album that kept revealing more and more of its subtle charms well after my initial review (here) was uploaded. I look forward to her gig in Wellington (tonight already!).

My ‘New Zealand’ album of the year has to be local-boy-done-good Myele Manzanza’s solo debut effort (reviewed here).

I also had a fair bit of time for Ladyhawke’s 2012 album, Anxiety, another highly polished synthpop gem from Masterton’s Pip Brown.

 

Ladyhawke: pomp and polish

But those two are merely the tip of the iceberg during what was a great year for “local product”. My only issue is that I didn’t get around to listening to enough of it.

Reissue of the year if only for the fact that I didn’t fully get into it first time around and it therefore still felt remarkably fresh: Paul Simon’s masterpiece, Graceland, which came with all the additional bells and whistles offered by repackaging.  

So that’s “the albums of 2012”. If not the best, then certainly my “most listened to”. It was a year where more streaming/download options than ever before – not to mention a procession of different listening devices, each one better than the last – resulted in instant access to a wider range of music than I could ever have previously imagined. Right now it’s hard not to feel a little bit like a lucky old cat licking a super-sized dollop of fresh cream.

Here’s a clip from one of the albums I binned in haste, and probably shouldn’t have. Hot Chip’s gem ‘These Chains’, one of my single tracks of the year … lifted from (the 2012 album) In Our Heads:

 

 

 

 

List: 10 Great Gigs

 

Ten exceptional gigs spanning three full decades from 1981 to 2010. I’ve restricted this list to specific concerts, deliberately omitting DJ gigs/sets and performances that were part of a summer festival weekend or any event featuring a multitude of bands. This was originally posted on:  http://croymusicmiscellany.com/

1 New Order – Town Hall, Wellington, New Zealand, 1987

Synthetic Goodness

By 1987 New Order were big news, and the band’s reach had extended well beyond its Manc roots all the way across several oceans to little old New Zealand. Most of that was due to a dancefloor stomper called Blue Monday having already taken its rightful place as the best selling 12-inch single of all-time, but more generally the band’s popularity had been cemented by the release of four exceptional albums over the course of the preceding six years. The band’s February ’87 gig was my first at the Wellington Town Hall, and it coincided with New Order enjoying the coveted status of my “latest fave band”. I arrived sufficiently early to get a prime standing spot centre-left and just two rows of bodies back. As I recall it, the sound was perfect – crisp, clear, and state of the art. More memorably, it was also the night I fell hopelessly in love with keyboardist Gillian Gilbert – albeit a temporary condition. Gillian isn’t a “beauty” in any conventional sense but that night on stage, almost within touching distance (easy there tiger!), she was the queen of gothic cool personified, teasing me with her relative detachment and her nonchalant control of the electronic rig of synthetic goodness that surrounded her. I can also recall being quite impressed with bassist Peter Hook on one of the rare occasions I dared look away from Gillian for more than a few seconds. Nearly a quarter of a century and dozens upon dozens of concerts later, I can’t for the life of me remember a single track the band played that night but I just know all of the classics (to that point) were covered, all of the boxes were ticked, and I left the venue convinced that I’d just witnessed New Order performing at the absolute peak of its powers – which, with the benefit of hindsight, was very much the case.

2 The Specials – Logan Campbell Centre, Auckland, New Zealand, 2009

Extra Special

There are some gigs you go to on a last minute whim, some you go to simply because of the current hype surrounding a particular artist or band, others you attend because friends convince you that it would be a good excuse for night out ... and then there are those you’ve waited your whole life for and you just know that you’ll never get another chance unless you make the commitment nice and early. The Specials gig in Auckland back in 2009 fell into the latter category for yours truly. A once in a lifetime opportunity to see a band that had never before performed in New Zealand, a band I’d admired from a (long) distance for the best part of 30 years, and one that will surely never cross my path ever again. Suffice to say I snapped up three tickets as soon as they went on sale, applied for a “long weekend away” clearance from “she who must be obeyed”, and invited two of my oldest and closest pals to join me on a (1200km return) roadtrip of ‘Fear and Loathing’ proportions. As it turned out, the masterplan was executed to perfection ... for the best part of 48 hours, three 40-something Rude Boys from way back indulged in the sort of wanton debauchery that would have had even Hunter S Thompson reaching for the industrial strength Nurofen. The band didn’t disappoint on the night; from the outset it became a journey into “greatest hits” territory and I’m fairly certain every single track from the acclaimed self-titled debut album got an airing, as well as several others from the More Specials follow-up. The perennially grumpy Terry Hall looked somewhat heavier and worse for wear but his voice remained as distinctive as ever. Co-vocalist Neville Staple was a ball of energy throughout, but the real key to a phenomenal Specials performance was that sublime rhythm section. The only downsides were the venue’s poor acoustics, and the fact that a certain Mr Jerry Dammers missed the tour. But this was the nostalgia circuit after all, and we’d learned a long time ago that we can’t always have everything.

3 BB King – Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Scotland, 1994

BB & Lucille

I remember getting into some trouble for not taking my soon-to-be-wife to this particular gig on account of the fact that I “didn’t think she’d be into it” ... or just plain “didn’t think” (you decide!). If memory serves, this was part of a wider Glasgow International Arts Festival taking place at the time, and I went with a work colleague from the hotel I worked at. I recall being in awe of the venue itself but that was offset by the fact that we were sitting down throughout. Suffice to say I was a little frustrated, but the sound quality was fantastic. BB King (85) toured NZ last month to mixed/poor reviews so I guess I was quite lucky to see the Blues Legend at the relatively young age of 68. I actually hadn’t anticipated this gig being quite so funky (James Brown-esque to the point of King’s on-stage entourage including a dedicated dancer – almost a JB-lookalike – improvising on all of the Godfather’s best shuffles) but such is King’s range and versatility I really shouldn’t have been surprised. It was a special night of classic Blues, Gospel, and pure unadulterated Soul at its very best. And oh man, what a guitarist!

4 Black Uhuru – Town Hall, Wellington, New Zealand, 2003

Pocket Dynamo Rose

Okay, so this wasn’t strictly Black Uhuru, but it was as close as it gets – original vocalist Michael Rose, along with the sensational ‘riddim twins’ Sly Dunbar (drums) and Robbie Shakespeare (bass) – and the set-list played like a “best of” Black Uhuru. Rose had been replaced as Black Uhuru’s vocalist by one Junior Reid in the mid-Eighties, but it is Rose’s superior voice that dominates the band’s best material. If you’ve never seen Sly ‘n’ Robbie live, close up and in the flesh, then I’d contend your musical education isn’t complete – this was exhibition stuff by two of the finest musicians ever to grace a stage in New Zealand. As for the pint-sized Michael Rose ... the pocket jack-in-the-box gave what must surely have been one of his best ever vocal performances – covering virtually all of Black Uhuru’s “hits” and a number of other key genre standards. Aside from the seriously sweet smells permeating the Town Hall that night, my abiding memory of this gig is an extended version of the classic Party in Session, which just seemed to go on and on ... and actually summed the night up perfectly.

5 David Bowie – Athletic Park, Wellington, New Zealand, 1983

Fashion & Infamy

David Bowie was a genuine hero for me by the time he came to NZ in late 1983 as part of his ‘Serious Moonlight’ World tour, but I now fully appreciate that I was about ten years too late in terms of seeing him in his prime. By ’83 of course he was at his commercial peak (Let’s Dance was a global smash) but a mere shadow of the artist that bestrode the Seventies like a colossus. This was bottle blonde Bowie in a flash white suit, churning out generic disco for the masses, looking – from a “creative” perspective at least – for all the world like yesterday’s man. He was cashing in, and very much on auto pilot, but I still enjoyed the sense of occasion, the outdoor event, that this gig presented. It was Bowie, and even if he only played Life on Mars (which he did) I was going to be there to witness it. Then again, “enjoy” and “witness” might be stretching it ... this gig also triggered my own personal ‘Christiane F’ moment. What else do you call collapsing in a heap after vomiting all over your 16-year-old punkette girlfriend’s carefully and lovingly prepared barnet just as Bowie kicked off? ... probably not the high point of our already tempestuous relationship. That said, I do recall the two support bands – NZ’s own Dance Exponents and Oz new wavers The Models – were nothing less than brilliant ... in addition to Life on Mars. Perhaps it was Bowie’s horrendous suit that made me do it? Maybe it was the vodka? Regardless, it was kind of fitting, and surely a boy is allowed one little mistake? – apparently so, we continued to fight for the next two years before push met shove. But none of that is important, this gig makes the list simply because it was my first truly big “concert”.

6 U2 – Celtic Park, Glasgow, Scotland, 1993

His Lordship

I’d been living in Glasgow (or Coatbridge) just a matter of weeks by the time the juggernaut that was U2’s Zoo TV tour rolled into town in the summer of 1993. I wasn’t a massive U2 fan by any stretch but for whatever reason I found myself attending both gigs U2 performed at the hallowed football stadium in Glasgow’s east end – on successive days, a Saturday and a Sunday. As such the gigs tend to blend into one, with support acts on either day including PJ Harvey, Utah Saints, and Stereo MCs – though quite who played when remains unclear in my befuddled head nearly two decades on. I’d never before seen anything quite like this – a massive stage with all sorts of structural/visual aids, giant television sets for live video link-ups etc (did Bono really call Sarajevo or somewhere mid-concert?). Again this rates more as an event for me rather than anything specific to the music, or the quality thereof. U2 was clearly at the height of its popularity – quite probably the biggest band on the planet at the time – and to some extent the big stage funk and all of the excitement surrounding it won me over sufficiently for me to start collecting the band’s back catalogue. Not that it gets much of an airing these days.

7 Laurie Anderson – Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, New Zealand, 1986

Life Lessons with Laurie

If I thought U2 presented a state of the art concert in 1993 (and they did), I don’t quite know how to adequately describe Laurie Anderson’s gig at Wellington’s sedate Michael Fowler Centre in 1986. This was part of the Wellington Festival of the Arts – an annual (?) month long arts extravaganza sorely missed today. It wasn’t so much a music concert as a “life lessons” lecture involving a projector, slides (that’s a bit like MS Powerpoint, kids), electric violins, synthesisers, vocoders (see auto tune), and a whole swag of other electronic wizardry. And it was about as intimate a concert experience as I’ve ever had – Laurie was so open to discussing her life story I half expected “any questions from the floor?” at the conclusion of her set. I felt I got to know her, and it isn’t often you can say that about a so-called popular music artist after just a couple of hours in their company. But there was music aplenty as well, some classical, and some weird excuse for what might loosely be described as “pop”. What a shame most know her as either “that chick that did O Superman” or as “Lou Reed’s missus”. Rock on Laurie!

8 Paul Weller – The Powerstation, Auckland, New Zealand, 2010

Waking Up Auckland

Paul Weller the solo artist, Paul Weller the Legend. Unlike the Specials gig a year earlier, the Weller gig in Auckland was not part of the nostalgia circuit. This wasn’t about an artist coming to NZ for the first time simply to play his oldest and greatest hits. It was all about Paul Weller – living, vibrant, and contemporary – arriving to play his current material and perhaps also to delve deep into the past depending on how the mood took him. That’s the benefit of being active as a recording artist, of being relevant, and of having more than a couple of albums to draw from. However, like the Specials, Weller is another artist I’d waited forever to see live. In the end Weller mixed things up nicely – tracks from his 2010 album Wake Up The Nation dominating the set-list alongside several other key solo career gems, Jam classics like That’s Entertainment and A Town Called Malice, but surprisingly very little from his Style Council period. The Powerstation is probably the best live venue in New Zealand and its comfortable environs – despite being sold out – certainly added to my enjoyment of the night, as did the fact that my beloved and I were finally able to enjoy an overdue night out in the big smoke.

9 Split Enz – Sports Stadium, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 1981

Kiwi Legends

When they write the definitive tome on the history of popular music in New Zealand there will be an entire chapter (if not several) devoted to Split Enz and its wider influence through the Seventies and Eighties. And not just because the band spawned the monster that eventually became Neil Finn’s Crowded House, but because Split Enz was the first Kiwi band (of my lifetime) to produce wholly original material that sold by the truckload (locally). The band’s 1980 album, True Colours, also happened to provide the very fluorescent soundtrack to my final year of high school. When Split Enz came to my (old) home town of “palmy” in 1981 I was barely out of school uniform so this has to rate as my first serious gig. For the uninitiated it is difficult to describe quite what Split Enz sound like – they started out as quirky prog weirdos before morphing into mainstays of NZ’s new wave scene, finally running out of gas by the mid Eighties when the Finn brothers split and started to do their own projects. For me, Split Enz rate as NZ’s number one “pop” act of all-time, and I count myself very lucky to have witnessed the band performing at its peak. But wait, there’s more ... the support band at this gig was a certain Blam Blam Blam, a band whose flame flickered brightly but all too briefly, another with a strong personal connection to yours truly. I hope to rave about the “great lost Kiwi bands” in more detail sometime in the future on CMM, and Blam Blam Blam will just as likely provide the backbone to that piece. Put simply, the Blams were sensational on the night in question, and just quietly, may have even overshadowed the main act.

10 Swervedriver – King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, Scotland, 1993

Duel Single

I’m now wondering how Swervedriver manage to scrape into my top 10 at the expense of luminaries like Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Massive Attack, Womack & Womack, and um, the Stray Cats, but sometimes a gig is more about the venue and the night itself; the sense of adventure rather than the artist up on stage. And to be fair, we’re talking about the low ebb 1986 version of Bob Dylan in this instance, and all of the others were irretrievably flawed gigs for reasons best not gone into here. So Swervedriver make the cut. When you’re a stranger in a “foreign” city you tend to gravitate to places you feel most comfortable and in terms of my own two years living in Glasgow there are two places that loom large in the memory bank – the aforementioned Celtic Park on match day, and the renowned King Tut’s venue which was practically – and most conveniently – a mere stone’s throw from my inner city dwelling. King Tut’s became a semi regular haunt in the months that followed but I’ll always recall with fondness my first visit there. Swervedriver were shoegaze survivors enjoying a period of relative success thanks to a monumental track called Duel riding high in the indie charts at the time; I wasn’t a huge fan but I absolutely loved Duel and I’ll never forget being part of the sweaty heaving throng on the compressed King Tut’s dancefloor when the opening bars of that track roared into life. It is just a small thing but recall of that moment remains crystal clear, and for a few weeks afterwards the Swervedriver gig was all I talked about. It was a short-lived love affair with that particular band, but King Tut’s had won me over for the duration. So much so, every subsequent visit to Glasgow has seen me buying the latest edition of a publication called ‘The List’ in the hope that I’ll find another excuse to return to King Tut’s.

Gig Review: Paul Weller, Auckland, 2010

The Modfather

Concert Review: Paul Weller – Live at the Powerstation, Auckland, 30 October 2010

(a bit late getting this up, but the review was written a week or so after the gig) ...

With Paul Weller having never previously performed in New Zealand with either The Jam or The Style Council, or indeed while wearing his solo hat in more recent times, it was no great surprise that Weller was able to sell out three consecutive nights at Auckland’s Powerstation venue (capacity approx 1000) within hours of each gig being announced.

Despite many of my casual friends or work colleagues responding with a baffled “who?” when I informed them that I was attending the middle concert of the three, Weller remains a big draw in this part of the world, particularly when it comes to nostalgic middle-aged expat Brits looking to capture a glimpse of the man many consider to be a genuine legend back in his (and their) home country. Suffice to say that “Kiwi” accents were rather conspicuous by their scarcity on the night under review.

The Powerstation is certainly a great venue – large enough to accommodate a good sized crowd yet small enough to feel relatively intimate. Add to that decent acoustics, a genuine “club” feel with separate zones, home comforts such as plush sofas/chairs, not to mention easy access to multiple bars, air conditioning (!) and well … we were all set for a top night once a good spot on the mezzanine floor had been secured for our viewing pleasure. It was great to see the Powerstation almost full and buzzing, but by no means over-crowded, by the time the support act (The Conversations? - quirky Pop), started its thankfully-not-too-prolonged set.

Leading up to the gig there had been much speculation about which “version” of Weller we would see on the night. Would we get the beloved “Jam classics”? And what about those old faves from the Style Council years? Or would greater importance be placed on his most recent solo work?

The answer, of course, was a mixture of all three eras, but with emphasis weighted to the latter; a few older Jam tunes for the nostalgia nuts, a very memorable ‘Shout To The Top’ as the token nod to the Style Council, and a balanced journey through some of the very best material from his solo years, with his latest album, Wake Up The Nation (2010), taking pride of place.

The thing about Paul Weller, at age 52, is that he isn’t quite yet ready for the nostalgia circuit. He is a living breathing artist continually releasing new work at regular intervals. He is evolving all the time as a songwriter and performer. This was never going to be like, say, The Specials (to pluck a band from the Jam-era) visiting Auckland in 2009. I attended that gig on the basis that the band had reformed specifically for a series of concerts celebrating its illustrious past. There had been no new Specials material for something close to three decades, so I went to that gig knowing exactly what I was going to get (and loving the band all the more because of it). So those expecting Weller to populate his set-list with tracks from a bygone era were always going to be disappointed.

While I’m not a huge fan of Wake Up The Nation, songs from his latest album dominated the early part of the set and hearing them in a live context enabled me to connect with them in ways I hadn’t been able to when listening to the album. ‘As Tears Go By’, ‘Pieces Of A Dream’, ‘Fast Car/Slow Traffic’, and the title track itself all provided highlights on the night and Weller seemed especially keen to challenge those in the crowd who hadn’t made the effort to buy the album (or its predecessor, 22 Dreams) … in fact he seemed a little obsessed with poor recent album sales in this part of the world as he mentioned this on more than one occasion.

We also got other solo career gems such as ‘The Changingman’ and ‘Broken Stones’ (off Stanley Road), and while I was a bit personally disappointed that tracks from his ‘Wild Wood’ album were overlooked, I couldn’t have any complaint about his choice of material from the Jam era – ‘That’s Entertainment’ being given an riotous airing early on, while versions of ‘Pretty Green’ and ‘Start’ counted among the night’s best. And although there would doubtlessly have been a few grumbles that ‘Going Underground’ didn’t get an outing, there can be few better encore finales (the second of two) than ‘A Town Called Malice’, which concluded a thoroughly professional and enjoyable gig.

Weller look relaxed and in control throughout – dominating the stage like the veteran he undeniably is, smoking, chatting, regularly switching guitars – depending on what song came next – and spending a portion of the night behind one of several keyboards at his disposal. It was notable that longtime sidekick Steve Craddock and other members of the band got a warm introduction and an acknowledgement from the crowd near the end, with Weller happy to allow his youthful drummer the indulgence of a short drum solo in response to the crowd’s hearty “happy birthday” chorus as he celebrated his special day.

More generally it was a special night for all in attendance. I read a review of the first night suggesting that the crowd at that particular gig was more akin to a football crowd than your usual Rock audience and it is actually difficult to disagree with that assessment (a house load of Brits? – what can you do?), albeit a very polite and less hooligan-like mob, but most left the venue with large smiles and surely the sense that they’d backed the winning team after witnessing a classic match. Cup Finals don’t come along very often, after all.